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Comment by potato3732842 | Hacker News Reader

Because when they're not blinding everyone they work really, really, really, well (to the safety and convenience of the users) and so anyone who tries to "do anything" will be caught trying to mediate between the two groups of screeching idiots and this is a fairly mundane issue so the upside is pretty small. Nobody's career takes off because they brokered a revision of headlight rules.

The whole situation reeks of the kind of thing that'll be mostly solved with technological progress over time (one of the german makes already has something that exempts a car in front of you from having the LEDs focused on it, I assume development is ongoing) and it really just remains to be seen if we get some law (which probably won't be decisive since this is a fairly subjective issue with no "obvious" answer) along the way.

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It’s not an issue with limitations of current technology. In some cases it’s just greed and laziness. I’ve had two vehicles that have the ability to be more friendly to other drivers, but that functionality is only enabled outside of the U.S. (matrix headlights or the equivalent).

GM vehicles had been notorious for having poorly adjusted headlights from the factory. The fact that Xenon systems seemed to always come with auto leveling and LED often does not is crazy.

emphasis on "other drivers." AFAIK, matrix headlights do not handle cyclists, pedestrians, or animals, but I would be glad to hear otherwise.

High beams also work really really well when they're not blinding everyone. We managed that tradeoff by putting them on a toggle switch and teaching drivers to use them only when appropriate, rather than making them the only headlights the car is equipped with.

Not blinding other traffic on the road is a safety critical concern. A few seconds of being blinded is enough to cause a serious accident. This means that any technology that is intended to legitimate brighter headlights by masking other traffic needs to have something like a ≥99% efficacy. (Exact number doesn't really matter.)

> one of the german makes already has something that exempts a car in front of you

… and this technology does not have that level of efficacy, and neither do any of the others.

> The whole situation reeks of the kind of thing that'll be mostly solved with technological progress over time

Stuffing ever more controllers, cameras, and sensors in there to focus and aim LEDs just sounds like the most over-engineered solution to this problem imaginable. The dealers are just going to love all the income from repairing all these points of failure. All for what gain? Yes, yes, “safety,” I know. Consider, though, that as drivers feel more comfortable on the road with their white dwarves, they are likely going to drive faster and more recklessly. It’s the same as American Football helmets switching away from leather—the hits get harder.

>Stuffing ever more controllers, cameras, and sensors in there to focus and aim LEDs

I agree it's all overcomplicated bullshit in order to polish another percent or two out of the turd but the overcomplicated bullshit is already in the field so why not write software that uses it a little better?

>Consider, though, that as drivers feel more comfortable on the road with their white dwarves, they are likely going to drive faster and more recklessly. It’s the same as American Football helmets switching away from leather—the hits get harder.

Faster when adjusted for equivalent safety sounds like a good thing to me.

No, you don't understand the problem at all.

The issue is not the technology or the absolute brightness of a bulb.

The problem is that replacement bulbs have a different beam pattern and the headlight mount needs to be adjusted. That's it.

In the vast majority of cases, car headlights are blinding simply because they're aimed too high. On most(all?) vehichles there is an adjustment mechanism under the hood. Problem is it takes special tools and procedures that nobody knows or cares about.

As a sibling commenter said, we've managed to survive for the better part of a century with toggleable high beams. This isn't a complicated problem.

>In the vast majority of cases, car headlights are blinding simply because they're aimed too high.

No, it's almost always true that the light output is far, far too bright. Adjusting headlight aim is good and should be done, but it does not solve the problem, and notably is not effective in road conditions other than smooth (bumps cause lights to go up and down), flat (inclines cause the harmful light level to change), and dry (water or ice on the ground cause reflective glare).

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